Re: Re: Adding tags, grouping tags

From: Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>
To: rjhorn@alum.mit.edu
Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Re: Adding tags, grouping tags
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 08:18:45 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <568820C3-2479-4264-85DA-70DD531E0577@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4CC2FC16.9050202@alum.mit.edu>

Hi,

I have the feeling that there are really two strands of
discussion going on here.

1. A two-level or even hierarchical way to *enter* *normal* tags,
    i.e. tags that are specified in the headline of a node.

2. A complex new structure that would somehow utilize properties to
    crease a tag-like parallel structure that can be used in searches.

Is this a correct view of what is being discussed?

- Carsten

On Oct 23, 2010, at 5:15 PM, Robert Horn wrote:

> On 10/16/10 4:09 PM, Carsten Dominik wrote:
>>
>> On Oct 16, 2010, at 9:26 PM, Robert Horn wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/16/2010 01:32 AM, Carsten Dominik wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Oct 15, 2010, at 4:43 PM, Ilya Shlyakhter wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Karl Maihofer <ignoramus <at> gmx.de> writes:
>>>>>> Besides that I have tags in other contexts, e.g. GTD-related  
>>>>>> tags etc.
>>>>>> So it would be very useful to be able to group the tags as it is
>>>>>> possible for agenda commands.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think that a way to define logical groups of tags (or even a
>>>>> hierarchy of tags
>>>>> -- say with a subtree of tag names?) would be a very useful  
>>>>> addition.
>>>>
>>>> I can see that this could be useful - but the code is
>>>> not in any way prepared to do this, so this would be pretty hard
>>>> to implement.
>>>>
>>> Is it worth exploring use of the properties drawer? The tags in  
>>> org are
>>> a fairly simple and thus limited structure. The properties drawer  
>>> can
>>> have a lot more structure with a more controlled environment.
>>
>> I don't think I understand what you mean here. How would that help?
>>
>> - Carsten
>
> My first thought was just to deal with visual clutter and parsing
> headaches. Encoding standards like IDv3 have a large list of tags and
> tags with values that are encoded and hidden in MP3 files. The display
> is controlled by application. This is very much like the drawer
> behavior in org. So putting tags into drawers would deal with the
> clutter associated with having a great many tags on one item.
>
> The next level would be to have org aware of the tag structure. This
> would mean having a vocabulary description that describes the tags.
> The vocabulary can be described as:
>
> Top level: Context, e.g., GTD
>   Level 1: TagA
>     Level 2: TagB, a kind of TagA
>        Level 3: TagC, a kind of TagB
>   Level 1: TagD
>   etc
>
> Usually Tags are unique with in a context, but might collide between
> contexts. So I might find the tag "TASK" used in different contexts.
> Multiple tags can occur within a context, so something might have TagA
> and TagD, and the presence of a lower level tag implies the higher  
> level
> tags. So TagC would imply TagB and TagA in the example above.
>
> This is a simplification of full ontological structures that can be
> expressed in a language like OWL, but it is one that people can grasp
> and use easily. It meets most needs. The music and photographic
> standards and their easy usage indicates this.
>
> The vocabulary description could easily be done with some lisp
> customization, the way it is done for task states, or it could be in  
> an
> org file. Both ways have their advantages.
>
> For each tag you can have a list of pairs of context+tag to keep tags
> unique. Appending these as text to each line introduces a lot of  
> visual
> clutter and parsing headaches. I would put these into drawers to  
> reduce
> the visual clutter and manage duplication. For the tag descriptions I
> would have another location that has the full structure of tags, so  
> that
> a friendly display selection could be used that reflects the  
> hierarchy.
> A tag assignment similar to the IDO selection of levels within an org
> hierarchy would make sense. Perhaps an org structure would make sense
> for the vocabulary.
>
> A simpler tag that means "look in the tags drawer" would keep the text
> file readable and let the agenda processing deal with extracting and
> displaying. Non agenda views of the org file would just have the "look
> in tags drawer" tag. The viewing options would need to recognize  
> this to
> control how the drawer tags are displayed.
>
> R Horn
>
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